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This week, the Town Council approved its budget for the 2014-15 fiscal year that calls for $204.2 million in spending and a mill rate increase of about 2.8 percent.

The average home assessed at $250,000 will see "less than a $3.50-per-week increase per household" in taxes, said Harkins, who praised the council for doing "due diligence" in passing the budget.

The mill rate will be 35.63, meaning that a home with a market value of $250,000 (and an assessed value of $175,000) will see a tax bill of $6,235. The old mill rate was 34.64.

Officials said that even though the new budget calls for nearly $50,000 more in spending than Harkins wanted, the tax increase will be less that he had predicted when he proposed his budget two months ago. This is because the town expectes to see a one-time cash infusion of about $4.5 million from selling parcels of vacant land all over town. The parcels had been taken over by the town for nonpayment of taxes.

The parcel with the biggest price tag is 105 Beacon Point Road, adjacent to the Birdseye Street boat ramp. The town hopes to sell it for $5.6 million. Another seven-figure property is the former Contract Plating parcel at 540 Longbrook Ave., with a price tag of nearly $1.4 million.

The council knocked back some of the salary increases that were sought by the mayor's office for 90 town employees. Also, one additional finance position the administration wanted was rejected. However, a clerical position in the Recreation Department was added.

The school board had requested an increase of nearly $5.3 million, but only got $2.4 million. That was a little more than what Harkins proposed.

A linchpin of the new budget, Harkins said, was the $6.1 million needed to pay down the town's pension bond obligations. That represented 52 percent of the increase, or more than one mill.

"There is light at the end of the tunnel," Harkins said. "That (obligation amount) will plateau over the next couple years, but after that, it drops off like a cliff. Long term, it's the right thing to do. The projected saving is $90 million."

Also, the two registrars of voters were made full-time positions because of an increased workload resulting from the new optical-scan ballot system, officials said.

"These are new state mandates for registrars," Harkins said. "Originally, Hartford said that they were going to take on these duties, but in the end, the municipalities have to do them."

"I really wanted to see a new roof on Franklin School," Santi said in reference to the town's oldest school, at 1895 Barnum Ave. "There are worse roofs, but that's the oldest roof, and it's leaking now. It's a time bomb."

In a few weeks, the mayor and council will take up the capital improvement budget, high-cost items that are paid off through the sale of bonds. Santi said that he hopes that the Franklin roof will get taken care of in the capital budget.

"That roof is a must," he said. "And the state would pay for 60 percent of it."

As for the land sale, Santi questions whether the town would be able to unload all of this property.

"If it doesn't sell, we'll find ourselves in a hole," he said.

Henry Bruce, whose small group MOVEStratford waged a last-ditch effort to get the budget numbers cut, said that he was fed up with the town's leadership.

"When you talk about $205 million, there's got to be more of a debate," he said. "The town has got to move to performance-based budgeting, where costs have to be justified. But they don't want to run the business that way."